Archive for the ‘63 (Nine of Swords)’ Category

HUNT: I have to hand it to Weidman and the UFC. I can’t remember the last time a virtually unknown fighter stirred up this much hype as the usurper to the Silva dynasty. I feel like I’m standing alone on a platform where the train has long left the station. Is Weidman the one? He looked promising against a crippled Munoz, who couldn’t move his shoulder six weeks before the bout. I’m sticking with the aging Spider — I can always catch the later train. Silva by TKO

WAGENHEIM: Are we putting too much weight on Weidman’s most high-profile victory, in light of what we now know about the physical and mental state of Mark Muñoz on the night last summer when Chris pummeled him? On the other hand, shouldn’t Weidman’s plodding performance in his second-biggest fight get a pass, considering that he took on (and beat) the estimable Demian Maia on just 11 days’ notice? My point: The jury is still out on the 9-0 challenger. Not so with the champ, who’d already had 29 pro bouts, including four defenses of the UFC middleweight belt, by the time Weidman began his MMA career four years ago. I want to be sold on the good-natured yet bad-to-the-bone Weidman, but I’m not yet ready to liquidate my Silva stock. Silva by TKO.

WERTHEIM: The skills of Weidman are lost on no one but the upset pick — and it’s a hot one — feels more hopeful and whimsical than legitimate. Silva is MMA’s GOAT (Greatest of All-Time) and it’s because of his versatility and adaptability. If there’s a weakness in his game, it would have been exposed by now. Is Weidman — coming off a year-long layoff, under huge pressure, having faced no opponent nearly as skilled — ready? I say close by not quite. Silva by TKO.

A fish believed to be at least 200-years-old has been caught in Alaska.

A 39.08-pound rockfish caught by an insurance adjuster from Seattle on June 21 is also believed to be the oldest fish ever caught in the state, according to a local media report.

Henry Liebman reeled in the record setting catch from a depth of about 900 feet, and learned of his achievement when he brought the beast ashore.

‘I knew it was abnormally big [but I] didn’t know it was a record until on the way back we looked in the Alaska guide book that was on the boat,’ Liebman told the Daily Sitka Sentinal.

The ancient monster measured 41 inches, smashing the old record, set by a 32 and a half inch guppie, Troy Tidingco, Sitka area manager for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told the paper.

With the 32 inch minnow being over 200 years old, Tidingco said there is reason to believe Liebman’s catch is even older.

‘That fish was 32 and a half inches long, where Henry’s was almost 41 inches, so his could be substantially older,’ Tidingco explained to the paper.

The fish returned to Seattle with Liebman, who told the paper he plans to have it mounted. A sample was also sent to a lab in Juneau, the state capital, to help determine its age, reported the paper.

Should the fish’s age meet expectations, it would predate the US purchase of Alaska from Russia, which happened in 1867. Sitka, according to the local historical society, was the site of the ceremony commemorating the transfer of Alaska from Russia to the US later that year.

Though unusually large, Liebman’s catch isn’t the biggest fish ever hauled out of ocean. That distinction belongs to a bluefin tuna hauled out of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1979. Caught by sport fisherman Ken Fraser, the big tuna weighed in at a staggering 1,496 pounds, Fraser even wrote a book about the catch that he sells on his personal website.

The largest known fish in the ocean is the whale shark, according to National Geographic. The mega fish has been known to grow to lengths of 40 feet – as big as a city bus – and average over 20 tons in weight. Discovered off the coast of South Africa in 1828, the whale shark usually lives around 70 years, according to FishBase.

A star football player is in jail, charged with murder. Another man was sent to the same jail today on related weapons charges. And a third man in Florida turned himself in after authorities labeled him an “accessory after murder.”

Lost in the haze of fast-moving developments is a 27-year-old Connecticut man named Odin Lloyd. Massachusetts prosecutors say Lloyd, a semi-pro football player, was a friend of former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez – that is until Hernandez allegedly murdered him in cold blood on June 17.

Lloyd is to be mourned at funeral services today.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Lloyd’s sister broke her silence to remember the brother she knew.

“I’m still trying to process what’s going on,” Olivia Thibou said. “I feel like I relive every day in my dreams. I go to sleep and I relive everything that’s broadcast on TV. I relive the night that we found out. I relive just everything. Even when I’m sleeping at night, I feel like it’s just a bad dream I’m not waking up from.”

In the days before the killing, authorities said, Hernandez and Lloyd had a dispute about people Lloyd was talking to at a nightclub. Then on June 17, Hernandez allegedly took Lloyd on a drive with two other people, shooting him five times, execution-style. Lloyd first tried to fight, according to a gruesome description laid out in court Thursday, but he was no match for .45-caliber bullets.

Thibou teared up recalling the words uttered by prosecutors. But she acknowledged that Lloyd and Hernandez were friends.

“I do know that they were friends,” she said, though she didn’t want to say more.

Because of that friendship, Thibou said she’s having a hard time understanding how her brother could have met the end he did.

“It’s confusing,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anything that any man can do to have their life taken away. So I can’t even begin to process everything. It still feels like yesterday, that we just found out.”

Lloyd’s sister said the football was her brother’s life even though he wasn’t fortunate enough to make a living at it the way Hernandez did (the Patriots released Hernandez right after he was arrested Wednesday).

“He wanted to go to college and play football but, unfortunately, because of financial aid issues, he never ended up starting it,” she said, “and he ended up just joining the work force to raise money and see if he could go back to school.”

Worried he would lose too much playing time, Thibou said Lloyd “started playing semi-professional football” with the Boston Bandits.

Of late, Lloyd was working as a landscaper but “football was mostly his life – and his family.”

As Lloyd’s family prepared to pay their last respects, prosecutors told ABC News that everyone wanted in the murder is now in custody, though they have not revealed exactly who they allege did what in the middle-of-the-night darkness a mile away from Hernandez’s million-dollar home.

Twenty-seven-year-old Carlos Ortiz appeared Friday in court in North Attleboro, Mass., where he was ordered held without bail on weapons charges.

In Miramar, Fla., Ernest Wallace, 41, turned himself in to local cops telling them “that he saw his name in news reports and knew he had a warrant for his arrest,” according to an announcement from police. He is expected to be arraigned Saturday on “accessory” charges and then transferred at some point to Massachusetts.

Prosecutors have not revealed much about the final dispute between Lloyd and Hernandez or details on the NFL star’s alleged motive in the killing.

Law-enforcement sources told ABC News that detectives are focusing on whether Lloyd was killed because of information he might have had concerning a July 2012 double homicide for which Hernandez is now being investigated.

Lloyd’s family, though, is focusing on who they lost – not how.

“I wish that everybody had the opportunity to meet him,” Thibou said. People “missed out on meeting a great guy.”

Former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, already facing charges in a murder last week in North Attleborough, is also being investigated in connection with a 2012 double murder in Boston, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.

Investigators believe a fight broke out at Cure, a club in the South End, between two men and a group that included Hernandez.

The two men, Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado, friends who grew up in Cape Verde, left the club with three other men in a BMW sedan.

Abreu, who was driving, stopped at a traffic light on Shawmut Avenue, about to make a left onto Herald Street, when a silver or gray SUV with Rhode Island license plates pulled alongside the sedan. Someone from the SUV opened fire, killing Abreu, 29, and Furtado, 28.The men who were with them survived the attack and the killings were left unsolved.

The officials said investigators now believe that Odin Lloyd, the man Hernandez is charged with killing in a North Attleboro industrial park June 17, may have had information about Hernandez’s role in the double slaying.

“The motive might have been that the victim knew [Hernandez] might have been involved,” one of the officials said.

The new revelations raised the specter that Hernandez might have been playing football games last season with the Patriots after he had participated in a double murder.

The attack in Boston occurred just after 2 a.m. on July 16, 2012. Police said the shooter fired numerous times into the car, striking Abreu and Furtado, who was in the passenger seat.

One of the back-seat passengers was shot three times in the arm but survived. He was rushed to Tufts Medical Center and was treated and released. The other two occupants fled the car and were unharmed.

The two men’s deaths at the time were a mystery to their families and police, who said they had no ties to criminal activity.

Furtado was a tour guide on the idyllic island of Boa Vista in Cape Verde, where he led a mostly European clientele on jaunts along silky sand dunes, whispering palm trees, and world-class beaches, his family said. He arrived in Dorchester five months before he was killed to reconnect with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen in a decade.

Abreu grew up in Cape Verde, where he worked as a police officer there. He arrived in Dorchester around 2008 and became friends with Furtado. The two men were working together for a cleaning company based on Hamilton Street in Dorchester at the time of their deaths.

Authorities never found the SUV tied to the shooting.

Hernandez’s arraignment Wednesday in the killing of Lloyd came after a week of suspense in which media had camped out in front of Hernandez’s home and followed his car by helicopter, in a futile search for details from tight-lipped law enforcement officials. Residents in Massachusetts and beyond have been riveted by the story of a young, highly paid professional athlete who may have squandered a bright future.

A California grand jury has indicted a Florida man on charges he strangled his ex-wife and tossed her off a cruise ship in Italy.

Lonnie Kocontes, 55, who used to live in Southern California, was indicted by an Orange County grand jury on Friday and did not enter a plea during his Superior Court arraignment Monday, the Orange County Register (http://bit.ly/1bP1wIl) reported.

Kocontes remained jailed Tuesday. He is charged with murder for financial gain, which carries a potential death penalty and a minimum sentence of life in prison without chance of parole.

Kocontes will try to have the case dismissed at a June 26 hearing, arguing that local authorities lack jurisdiction to prosecute.

He and Micki Kanesaki, 52, divorced in 2001 after six years of marriage but continued to live together, off and on, in southern Orange County. They were sharing a cabin during a May 2006 Mediterranean cruise when she went overboard. Her body later washed ashore.

Italian police investigated but did not arrest Kocontes.

Another investigation began in 2008 after Kocontes began transferring more than $1 million from Kanesaki’s bank accounts into joint accounts he held with his new wife, authorities said.

He was arrested in February and pleaded not guilty to murder in May, but the case was dismissed. Prosecutors then moved to refile the charges, and another judge ruled that they could proceed. Last week, prosecutors presented evidence before the grand jury and obtained an indictment.

Achievements

For 6 years i was apart of a dance group, within those years i recieved many awards and performed in front of many. Also i have helped my school to raise money for charitys across the world.

Talents

I am able to dance, also jetski and waterskiing.

Ambitions

In my future i would love to be apart of the fashion industry, but travelling all over the world too. When leaving school i hope to achieve good grades in my gcse’s, so that i am able to take up the courses i want in college, which hopefully leads me to a successful job. Along side of this i would love to help raise as much money as i can for people suffering across the world.

As a small army of news organizations chases the Aaron Hernandez story, there will be conflicting and, necessarily, incorrect reports.

Our goal will in part be to sift through those reports, making sure you know what the various outlets have uncovered.

And I say all of that because the latest report will raise some eyebrows and/or drop some jaws. According to Karen Anderson of WBZ-TV in Boston, Hernandez has not been ruled out as a suspect in the death of an “associate” found roughly a mile from his North Attleboro home. Anderson also reports that Hernandez currently is not cooperating with authorities. (There had been conflicting reports as to whether Hernandez was initially uncooperative.)

Anderson cites a single unnamed law-enforcement source for both pieces of information. Without knowing who the source is, how the source knows what the source knows, and whether the source has an agenda, it’s impossible to assess the accuracy of the report.

WBZ-TV also reports that the victim is Odin Lloyd, 27, of Dorcester. Odin played semi-pro football with the Boston Bandits.

His body was found by a jogger, who told WBZ-TV that when police arrived they said it appeared Odin had been shot somewhere else and dumped in the industrial park roughly a mile from Hernandez’s home.